Twisted Minds: Christopher Buehlman

With my column Twisted Minds, I like to showcase artists/writers who I feel haven't been given the attention they deserve, creators that have fallen under the radar for whatever reason but are still producing quality, entertaining work. I don't measure the reviews they've gotten on Amazon or Goodreads, however. These are really authors that have slipped under my own personal radar and I am joyfully discovering their body of work. Christopher Buehlman has been publishing novels since 2011 but I have just now discovered him. I feel that readers looking for fresh and fun reinventions of classic horror tropes should discover him as well.

Christopher Buehlman

I first discovered his book The Lesser Dead and immediately fell in love with vampire vagabond Joey Peacock, a perpetually young lover of the nightlife who guides readers through late '70s New York and its nocturnal hunters of blood and good times. The book begins with a tone reminiscent of the autobiographies of bon vivants just now recovering from the hangover while knowing they had so much fun. Then the book becomes straight horror as some new, more frightening predators move in. You won't believe a phrase like "Let's make a rabbit of him" can be bone-chilling until you read this book.
I next checked out the novel's sort-of sequel The Suicide Motor Club. I say sort-of sequel because it still features vampires but many of these vampires do not invoke any sympathy, especially the leader of the eponymous club Luther Nixon. Luther is a former ridgerunner/race car driver who, along with his crew, run drivers off the road only to feast on the remains. He is crass, loud, and swimming in confidence thanks to his vampiric "charm," which mentally subjugates his victims when he needs them to forget his crew's presence or to simply humiliate and debase them before feeding. The Club soon run across mother Judith and her family, destroying her life and stealing her child. When life as a nun doesn't give Judith the peace she craves, she is recruited as a weapon by a group of vampire hunters. Think about what would happen if the paper scripts for Kill Bill and From Dusk Till Dawn fell down some stairs, were scattered, and then scooped back together into one larger movie.
I recently finished Those Across the River, Buehlman's first novel. It features Frank Nichols and his wife Eudora, a couple from Chicago who have moved down to Georgia to start a new life in a house he inherited. It sounds like the set-up to a conventional ghost story, but this is not a ghost story. It has elements of Southern Gothic, some folk horror, and a heavy dash of monster mayhem. To tell any more about the plot would reveal the twist in the book, but it does give a tragic update to a classic monster, one that's quite different from the power fantasies many paranormal romances, for example, indulge in.
These three books showcase Buehlman's talents for weaving seemingly unconnected plot threads into a rich tapestry that readers can appreciate once they reach the final page. For writers that love a good plot, these books offer an example of how to create one with multiple plot points. For writers (and readers) who love character development, these books also create three-dimensional characters that you fall in love with only to have their tragic circumstances, which are laid like landmines within the plot, break your heart. Like riding a roller coaster, you may feel a little queasy after reading them (particularly if you're squeamish, for Buehlman doesn't shy away from the violence), but the thrills will keep you coming back for more.

Twisted Minds: Grady Hendrix

Grady Hendrix is a name that many familiar with horror should know. He not only writes horror, but he’s also one of horror’s most visible ambassadors. He could have just sat back and enjoyed the royalties coming in from three great novels that he’s published, but he’s also working to increase horror’s visibility, particularly among librarians. He’s created a nonfiction book Paperbacks From Hell, which details the horror paperback boom of the 70’s and 80’s, and has published some of the books he mentions in Paperbacks as part of his new imprint. Along with making numerous visits to horror podcasts, he has even worked with Becky Spratford and her Summer Scares program to bring horror to libraries. The man is busy, but we should never forget that the man knows horror and knows how to write.

The cover of his debut novel Horrorstör was enough to get me interested. Having gone to IKEA many times, usually because my wife promised Swedish meatballs at the end of any shopping trip, I was familiar with the IKEA catalog, which the cover tried to emulate. What made me want to read are the haunted house tropes within the image (for example, a disembodied face or a crack in the wall). As I read, I saw many things that kept me reading. Sure there were the furniture diagrams that progressed into diagrams of torture devices. But underneath all that was a solid ghost story serious enough to be actually terrifying in spots. He even had a sympathetic protagonist, a young woman who is dealing with her own non-supernatural crisis: How does she find her way into adulthood when she’s trapped in a workforce that doesn’t seem particularly welcoming?

So Grady Hendrix knows about conflict and character, which he continues to demonstrate in his next novel, My Best Friend’s Exorcism, which, like Horrorstör, hooked me with its quirky premise. Best friends Abby and Gretchen face high school and the 80's together, but the ultimate test of their friendship is when Gretchen is possessed by a demon. Like Joe Lansdale, a personal favorite of mine, Hendrix goes beyond merely presenting a crazy situation and the chaos that ensues. Exorcism is one of my favorite novels because it is so grounded in the relationship between these two young women, showing why indeed one would risk everything to save the other’s eternal soul. Like Elvis in "Bubba Hotep" discovering life’s meaning when he had to fight for it, Abby learns just how powerful the bonds of friendship can be, pushing this title beyond an excuse to have cover art like an 80’s VHS tape but giving a surprisingly tender story as to how friendships make us our better selves.

This exploration of friendships continues in his latest We Sold Our Souls, as Kris Pulaski, former guitarist for the heavy metal band Dürt Würk discovers that her band’s former lead singer Terry made a Faustian deal with not only his soul but all of theirs. This novel has an epic quest feel to it as Kris tries to regain what she didn’t even know she lost, but she also represents one of Hendrix’s most tough-as-nails protagonist in the face of adversity. The passing of her band has meant that life had passed Kris by, leaving her 46 and a hotel clerk, not where she saw her life going at all. She is constantly disrespected and underestimated, and there are times even she doesn’t feel like she’s up to the challenges set before her. Her one weapon is the literal power of rock and roll in the form of a song that represents her anger and grit. What keeps me, and will probably continue to keep me, coming back to Hendrix’s work is his ultimate message of hope within his books, particularly his more recent novels.  That message is whatever horrors life throws our way, the human spirit is able to rise above them.

Twisted Minds featuring Cullen Bunn

Some say that we are in a horror renaissance. People might blame the political climate, the culture, what’s in the air we breathe and the water we drink, but there is no question that there are authors working in horror that are not only pushing the boundaries of what is considered taboo but also the boundaries of their respective mediums. Twisted Minds showcases those who are helping horror evolve, and even mutate, with the times.

Cullen Bunn might not be a name familiar with most people, unless you’re a fan of superhero comics like X-Men and Deadpool, which he writes. He is also making a name for himself by writing a few horror series that range from a coming-of-age tale in early Appalachia to a murder mystery that takes place before recorded history.

Getting my English degree at a Kentucky university introduced me to Appalachian literature. The protagonists in these stories often deal with themes like isolation, loss, and, particularly in young protagonists, the warring impulses between the connection to their home and the desire to escape, if only for a little while. Harrow County, where I first discovered Bunn, has all of these themes and then some. In what the book’s back cover describes as a “Southern gothic fairy tale,” Emmy is not only a girl on the cusp of adulthood, but she is also coming into her supernatural powers, which she uses to help the people she grew up with as well as the supernatural creatures that live there. She eventually becomes the land’s protector, serving both human and haint, as she deals with threats both internal and external. The plot is familiar with those who read Percy Jackson as Emmy strives to balance her roles in the human and haint world. Though she is uncomfortable at times with her power, particularly the reputation that comes with it, she soon grows into that fearsome reputation, for better or worse. A North Carolina native, Bunn captures the essence of the South in his characters and the art by Tyler Crook brings to mind a picture from the Saturday Evening Post brought to life.

Like Emmy coming into her powers, one of the major conflicts in Bunn’s work is the search for identity and one identity being gained at the loss of another. That is particularly true in the case of Adrian Padilla, the likeable, tortured protagonist in Regression. Adrian believes the waking nightmares that terrify him are just nightmares. He learns that’s not the case when, in trying to cure him, a hypnotist puts him under for a past life regression. Not only does he learn more about these bizarre visions, but he learns who he apparently was, and that someone was not a nice person. Worse, something has followed him back, an ancient evil from that past life that wants to reclaim him. If there was any argument for a story being improved by visuals, this can be cited as an example, or it can simply turn your stomach. Artist Danny Luckert draws plenty of insects crawling, wriggling, and eating their way in and out of hapless people who seem none the wiser. It is easy to see, since we literally see, what makes Adrian’s visions so terrifying. Fans of Cronenburg’s The Fly might feel a little nostalgic if not nauseous.

Bunn can easily write about our modern society as well as people from a century ago, but his latest collections have him looking at a time when humanity could not walk the earth due to the Flood. Dark Ark’s big draw to me was its premise: while Noah built an ark to safely transport all of God’s natural creatures through the terrible storm, the sorcerer Shrae is commissioned, definitely not by God, to transport the unnatural creatures: the manticores, the vampires, the naga, the things that stalk humanity in the dark. The story here is how these different groups of monsters interact, since they obviously do not care for one another, and why Shrae, who seems to be a good man with a family, must transport them. Admittedly, Shrae does not seem to be searching for an identity but readers will be watching to discover who Shrae is and how he balances the roles of loving father and powerful sorcerer in the service of evil.

Showing a knack for character development over the long haul sprinkled with generous helpings of action and horror, Cullen Bunn is the gateway writer for library patrons who love superhero comics but might want something scarier.